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Shinizak
2020-06-27, 10:53 AM
So I read a lot of RPGs, and while I'm looking mostly at cleric domains today this criticism extends across most RPGs. Namely. When you look at powers that deal exclusively with good and evil (or order and chaos, if you're feeling fancy) they tend to be anti-opposite rather than pro- concept

Like, let's look at the good domain. It's all spells about protecting you from evil creatures, or creating weapons to slay evil monsters. There's nothing in there that ACTUALLY facilitates good actions like atonement, or spells that facilitate peace and cooperation.

Evil spells are the same ****. They're all about driving off good rather than corrupting people, or worsening the world at large.

So I guess what I'm saying is: can we write (or post examples of) powers that deal with good or evil ACTUALLY making things more good or evil.

Nifft
2020-06-27, 11:07 AM
D&D alignments are really poorly implemented.

Sometimes it looks like the writer wants Good & Evil to be nothing more than opposing teams; other times the writer wants Good & Evil to be about morality, but ends up describing a really ham-fisted or cartoonish morality.

There are also times where it seems like someone just decided they needed a slot for a domain, so a random spell gets an alignment descriptor (looking at you, 3.5e deathwatch).

So yeah, I think you're right.


However, if you're asking for homebrew content, perhaps restrict this request to a specific edition or at least a particular game?

Shinizak
2020-06-27, 11:11 AM
However, if you're asking for homebrew content, perhaps restrict this request to a specific edition or at least a particular game?

I don't really want EXACT powers with EXACT effects. Instead, I want just a general overview of powers to work off of.

That being said, I'm happy to repost this in homebrew if that's more appropriate.

Nifft
2020-06-27, 11:39 AM
I don't really want EXACT powers with EXACT effects. Instead, I want just a general overview of powers to work off of.

That being said, I'm happy to repost this in homebrew if that's more appropriate.

Domination spells could be plausibly [Evil], including dominate person and dominate monster; Charm spells likewise. They might not be big evils (not compared to what some people used them to do), but the spells could plausibly be considered minor evils in themselves.

IMHO [Good] spells ought to ask something of you. The BoED abstinence component was an attempt at this, but not one I like. BoED sacrifice components & BoVD corruption costs are a bit too similar -- using both of them obscures what ought to be a thick clear line between these opposites.

So I'd look for effects like a lower-level status removal, but it puts the status effect on the caster (after another save).

Shield Other seems like a candidate for [Good].

King of Nowhere
2020-06-27, 12:09 PM
Domination spells could be plausibly [Evil], including dominate person and dominate monster; Charm spells likewise. They might not be big evils (not compared to what some people used them to do), but the spells could plausibly be considered minor evils in themselves.



and yet there are perfectly legitimate good uses for those spells. one common example is using mind rape as therapy for someone suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. but since you can add memories, you can also use it to teach, adding the memory of having read detailed books on a subject.
and a lot of weak-willed people would pay to have someone cast on them "suggestion: go to the gym", or "suggestion: actually do your homework".
I'm now picturing a worldbuilding concept around it, that some people got so used to this easier way of getting motivation that, without spells, they become cathatonic.

anyway, evil is something that hurts other for gain; i can see it applied strongly to something like liquid pain. and... i have a very hard time thinking of anything else that would be unambiguously good or evil. it is a well-accepted concept in life, that tools are not good or evil, but good or evil are the ways they are used. and spells behave just like any other tool. personally i went the other way, and removed the alignment descriptors from all spells, for this specific reason.

Biffoniacus_Furiou
2020-06-27, 01:28 PM
You're looking at the wrong domains. The Good and Evil domains were designed to facilitate Good vs Evil, and they accomplish exactly what they were designed for. There are domains like Protection, Community, Family, Purification, etc. to fit other Good themes. There are domains like Lust, Envy, Greed, and Domination to fit other Evil themes. That's not to say you couldn't have an Evil Cleric with the Protection domain, or a Good Cleric with the Lust domain. Tools are exactly that, they're not inherently good or evil, but they could be used for either purpose. This is why the aligned domains were designed as such, if you have a LN Cleric who wants to make the world a better place he can't take the Good domain, so you make a separate domain available to any alignment that accomplishes that.

Characters should have more depth than just being good or being evil, so why pick a domain based on one of those two things? Figure out your character's goals and established methods, then pick the tools that fit your concept.

Nifft
2020-06-27, 01:39 PM
and yet there are perfectly legitimate good uses for those spells.

Yes, I'd agree with that.

To me, that's a reason why a PC could use these 'evil' spells for the greater good, but the PC is playing with fire (and to me that's interesting, and can be good for the game).

It's a possible justification for these sorts of modestly-evil spells to be generally Arcane and not Divine -- the gods don't give out ambiguous spells, since the gods have hard-and-fast alignment DRM on their pay-to-pray lootboxes, and Arcane magic is all DIY hacking with no license agreement except a disclaimer about no warranty of fitness for a particular purpose.

Khedrac
2020-06-27, 01:40 PM
One of the problems with this is the aspect of "versus" - making what you associate with good to be the opposite of evil.

Most things people associate with "good" are things for helping other people (and/or the environment). A classic example of this is healing magics - in literature these are usually tied to goodness, at least to a degree. Now everyone (living) will use healing magic (except in rare circumstances where they have a viable reason not to) and this includes "evil" entities. The same goes for protection magics tec.
Usually what makes it "good" is when it is done altruisticly.
"Evil" will use these sorts of tools a lot, but usually selfishly (which can include things like healing others for no immediate reward - getting the support of the local community can be much more useful).

At this point, you have the problem that the key abilities of "good" are those that "evil" will want to use too - and if you are going for a good ability list versus an evil ability list this doesn't work; hence the 3.5 good domain is about fighting evil directly rather than doing good.

The same is not true in reverse, at least not to the same extent - cases where "evil" abilities are useful to good will be rare, but they will happen.

Lacco
2020-06-27, 02:06 PM
So I read a lot of RPGs, and while I'm looking mostly at cleric domains today this criticism extends across most RPGs. Namely. When you look at powers that deal exclusively with good and evil (or order and chaos, if you're feeling fancy) they tend to be anti-opposite rather than pro- concept

Like, let's look at the good domain. It's all spells about protecting you from evil creatures, or creating weapons to slay evil monsters. There's nothing in there that ACTUALLY facilitates good actions like atonement, or spells that facilitate peace and cooperation.

Evil spells are the same ****. They're all about driving off good rather than corrupting people, or worsening the world at large.

So I guess what I'm saying is: can we write (or post examples of) powers that deal with good or evil ACTUALLY making things more good or evil.

Do you mean stuff like... let's say a fog of minor corruption that would move people one step closer to Evil if they stay in it for long enough? Basically "you suddenly feel the need to argue or hit someone"?

Or the other part: the cleric conjures a circle in which people suddenly lose their reason to fight?

The first would be relatively easier if there were some mechanics for alignment change, or if the alignments were done on numeric scale (e.g. you collect 100 evil points, you move from Good to Neutral...).

Do I understand your intentions?

I actually started to write a Corruption mechanic for certain game some time ago. It was actually powering magic to certain degree (there were different tiers of corruption, with first two giving a good boost of around +10%/+20% to your power, while still keeping relatively under control. Unless you crossed certain threshold - deliberately, it was not easy to cross it and you got a fair warning - you could manage your corruption. After the threshold you got a decent power-up, but then your powers grew slower while the corruption was getting harder to resist. Until it overcame you completely.

On the other hand, you could still practice "safe" magic, staying out of corruption, but it was harder to reach the same power level.

So in this system, it's relatively simple to imagine stuff like you stated: you can desecrate a place so it corrupts everyone (something similar to irradiating a piece of land) or cleanse it so that magic actually is safer there.

Lvl 2 Expert
2020-06-27, 04:59 PM
Thematically speaking charm spells as well as the wider category of enchantment spells to me feel more like "light, but not good" rather than actual evil. The names alone for instance: enchanting just sounds like a very pleasant thing, same with charming. I might place them under chaotic, as something fey creatures and such would use.

However, as a thought exercise I tried to split the 8 schools (domains might be more productive, but I'm less familiar with those, also I going with the 5e versions of the schools where that matters) into 4 alignment corners, and this is what I end up with:
Good: Abjuration (protection) and Evocation (healing, but also blasting, good fighting spells without getting needlessly nasty).
Order: Divination (seeing the patterns of the world) and Conjuration (rebuilding the world as it should be).
Chaos: Illusion (trickery) and Transmutation (changing and diversifying orderly creations, also I couldn't come up with a reason to place this under evil).
Evil: Necromancy and Enchantment (because the alternative was transmutation).

So the conclusion here is: the game needs more evil.

OldTrees1
2020-06-27, 07:19 PM
There is very little that is always only good / evil rather than just prima facie good / evil. So a lot of good comes from things that are not exclusive to good.

On the other hand, evil does not want to do evil. They want to do X which happens to be evil.

Consider these two domains. I took a Good/Evil concept and listed related spells. However I can easily see someone of a different alignment, having that domain, even for the same reasons, but having a different alignment regardless.

Healer Domain 5E:
Medicine proficiency
(you have a gift, how will you use it?)
Cure Wounds
Lesser Restoration
Revivify
Locate Creature
Greater Restoration
Heal
Regenerate
Mind Blank
True Resurrection

Robbery Domain 5E:
Thieves tools proficiency
(now that you can get away with it, can you abstain from "borrowing"?)
Silent Image
Invisibility
Fly
Dimension Door
Animate Objects
Find the Path
Etherealness
Glibness
Wish

You can have the wandering medic trying to better society by curing every ill they come across. They improve people's lives and engender hope for a more virtuous next generation.

You can have the impossible thief who, in the process of acquisition, increases poverty around them. Forcing people into tough lesser evils choices as a result of poor conditions.

Cluedrew
2020-06-27, 08:38 PM
and yet there are perfectly legitimate good uses for those spells. one common example is using mind rape as therapy […]The worst part about this is it is not completely wrong.

Good spells would generally help lots of people, help people who are not you and if they demanded an extra cost would have one that must come from the user and could not be forced on someone else. In fact there might be an evil spell that allows you to do that.

aglondier
2020-06-28, 06:35 AM
I'm thinking that beyond just doing good, the Good domain should provide the priest with obvious sign of good divine power.

Good Domain. (pathfinder edition)

Granted Powers

Touch of Good (Sp): You can touch a creature as a standard action, granting a sacred bonus on attack rolls, skill checks, ability checks, and saving throws equal to half your cleric level (minimum 1) for 1 round. You can use this ability a number of times per day equal to 3 + your Wisdom modifier.
Holy Lance (Su): At 8th level, you can give a weapon you touch the holy special weapon quality for a number of rounds equal to 1/2 your cleric level. You can use this ability once per day at 8th level, and an additional time per day for every four levels beyond 8th.

Domain Spells

Level 1. Celestial Healing or Bless
Level 2. Shield Other or Consecrate
Level 3. Prayer or Life Shield
Level 4. Celestial Healing, Greater or Blessing of Fervor
Level 5. Breath of Life or Atonement
Level 6. Heroes' Feast
Level 7. Holy Word
Level 8. Holy Aura
Level 9. Miracle

The granted powers fit okay. Celestial healing is brilliant in concept, but crappy in implementation, so use bless instead if you like. Consecrate and atonement are meatier spells, but not sure of their daily utility. Life shield and breath of life just add to the aura of good and awesomeness. If your 17th level cleric isn't tossing around miracles, maybe they should be...

MoiMagnus
2020-06-28, 11:13 AM
So you want more powers like necromancy which are "evil by nature" (and regularly spawn thread about "My necromancer is using necromancy for non-evil goals, is he still evil? Is magic warping his mind to do more evil stuff or does he just gain an evil alignment and keep being non-evil for everything non-related to casting necromancy spells?").

As for power that are good per essence, the "calm emotion" spell comes immediately to my mind. Everything related to healing could be argued as good too. (Sure, it can be used for evil, but spells are tools, and almost every tool can be used for evil. Even "protection from evil" could be used to takeover the commandment of an infernal army and then use this army to enslave the material world.)

PairO'Dice Lost
2020-06-28, 04:38 PM
(Sure, it can be used for evil, but spells are tools, and almost every tool can be used for evil. Even "protection from evil" could be used to takeover the commandment of an infernal army and then use this army to enslave the material world.)

This is precisely why the Good domain isn't a healing domain, or a blessing domain, or the like. Healing isn't Good, because evil clerics also heal their allies after they take a paladin smite to the face; buffing isn't Good, because demonologists also buff their summoned minions; conjuring magical food isn't Good, because priests of Gruumsh also feed their ravening hordes before a battle; detecting lies isn't good, because priests of Bane can use it to ferret out rebels against their tyranny; and so on. Likewise, animating undead isn't Evil (much as certain spells are mis-tagged with that descriptor), because negative energy isn't evil and you can do a lot of good with skeletal minions; death spells aren't Evil, because a painless death can be a lot more merciful than immolating someone with a fireball; charm spells aren't Evil, because you can use them to resolve a conflict without resorting to violence; curses aren't Evil, because you can curse someone to encourage good behavior (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/markOfJustice.htm), and so on.

So if you want to make a domain about pure undiluted Goodness without regard to a specific god or philosophy, the only criterion you can really use is "Is this effect diametrically opposed to Evil?", and the same for the other alignment domains, thus we get the Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, and Balance domains as written...and even then you have spells like shatter in Chaos and blade barrier in Good that don't even pretend to be "mostly chaotic" or "mostly good" because they just didn't have any appropriate aligned spells at those levels.

Bohandas
2020-07-06, 09:39 PM
Domination spells could be plausibly [Evil], including dominate person and dominate monster; Charm spells likewise. They might not be big evils (not compared to what some people used them to do), but the spells could plausibly be considered minor evils in themselves.

I don't really see Evil resolving conflicts without violence

OldTrees1
2020-07-06, 11:10 PM
I don't really see Evil resolving conflicts without violence

Why not? Does being evil sever their vocal cords? Does it make them blind to how violence could be worse than losing the conflict? Evil does not come with a lobotomy.

MoiMagnus
2020-07-07, 04:53 AM
I don't really see Evil resolving conflicts without violence
That's because you don't rate the mental violence of Dominate the same as the physical violence.
(Which is not unreasonable, since the rules don't make explicit how violent those spells are)

Fireball's description doesn't include in his text the potential long-term consequences of having your skin burned (loss of touch, recurring pains and suffering, ...)
Likewise, Domination's description doesn't including the potential long-term traumas of having lost the control of your body to someone else.

(Moreover, stealing all your stuff sneakily and running away with it avoiding any fight is still quite evil, even if it actively avoid violence. Clever Evil avoid violence as long as they are not sure it will be beneficial to them.)

Nifft
2020-07-09, 01:18 PM
I don't really see Evil resolving conflicts without violence

Violence isn't the only way to cause harm.

Your conception of evil seems a bit limited.

Drew's Alias
2020-07-17, 11:55 PM
Violence isn't the only way to cause harm.To carry the point further, one can be evil without having a specific intention of harming others. A person that pursues their goals ruthlessly and without regard to the suffering they cause is still evil, even though they aren't going out of their way to cause that suffering. They aren't going out of their way to avoid it, either. In this case, it's their ruthless indifference that makes them evil.

King of Nowhere
2020-07-18, 08:51 AM
some of my most successful villains were always very nice and polite to everyone, and would always avoid violence (physical or otherwise) whenever possible. because it's pragmatic. because pushing people to be your enemies is wasteful. and it's easier to get things done when you have a good reputation.

the high priest of vecna from my campaign takes the cake. became high priest, went public, denounced the previous evilness and corruption of his cult and reformed it along ruthless-but-reasonable lines. gained social acceptance, turned a small underground cult into a major religion. used forbidden magic for socially useful purposes; spearheaded the use of undead minions as cheap labor force, organized his clerics to provide effective healtcare to the masses. was a master diplomat working towards world peace, he single-handedly stopped wars with his efforts. he never killed except enemies in battle, and he tried to avoid battle when he could anyway. he gave a decisive contribution towards ushering the world to an age of prosperity. he could have posed as a paragon of good and virtue, and make you forget he was a lich.
then, all of a sudden, he tried to suck the soul of 5 million people as part of a ritual to ascend to godhood.
turned out, he always planned to ascend, and he had figured out early on that he would need to suck souls, lots of them. and the ritual to suck souls had limited radius. and there was no way a medieval society would produce a population density sufficient for his spell. so he made the world progress, until it could produce the population density he needed. he stopped war, he stopped strife, he stopped plagues, he stopped famine. because he needed those people alive to be sacrificed in his ritual. he was nice, he was a diplomat, he was a benevolent boss. so he could get people to follow him. he cultivated a sterling reputation. so he could set up a private research facility in the middle of a highly populated city without anyone inquiring too closely. he also killed a few thousand people in his research to perfect the ritual, but he was very careful to not be discovered. he mostly used orcs and goblins as guinea pigs, because nobody goes to investigate if some of them disappear.

and he's not my only villain to have "usher the world to an age of peace and prosperity" as part of their agenda. you often need to build up, in order to better tear down.

Cluedrew
2020-07-18, 07:40 PM
some of my most successful villains were always very nice and polite to everyone, and would always avoid violence (physical or otherwise) whenever possible. because it's pragmatic. because pushing people to be your enemies is wasteful. and it's easier to get things done when you have a good reputation.
[...]
and he's not my only villain to have "usher the world to an age of peace and prosperity" as part of their agenda. you often need to build up, in order to better tear down.I've gone further and written explicitly evil characters who side with the angels because it turns out to be in their self interest to do so. The Gods are Bastards has a character who says something like "Sufficiently well informed self-interest is indistinguishable from good." Which isn't entirely true but they can be quite similar.

Which for this thread just means it is actually easier to create distinct evil spells than distinct good spells. Good will not do evil* but evil will do good if it helps. So for evil you can have terrible costs, massive fallout, ugly means and other lines that good will not cross. But evil doesn't have lines it will not cross, so what do you put for good? Well you kind of have to go for the aesthetics or things that are harder to use for evil, things like healing or truth.

* Of course there are "lesser evil" and "for the greater good" which can make the line a bit fuzzy but that is something you can explore in a campaign.

King of Nowhere
2020-07-18, 08:04 PM
"Sufficiently well informed self-interest is indistinguishable from good."


i like this formulation. i must remember to have one of my pragmatic villains use this line.

i also feature more traditional villains, but they tend to come out cartoonish and a fair bit dumb, and they end up inevitably ineffectual; sort of like Nale. the players are supposed to laugh at them, curbstomp them with a bit of smart (most often by exploiting the fact that said villains have alienated all their potential allies), and then go back twarting the main villain. who's probably funding an orphanage as part of some sinister plan of world domination.

Kyutaru
2020-07-21, 03:26 PM
The formulation is good and only makes me like the morality axis even less. The original anti-opposites fits my perception of good and evil better because it feels like some cosmic political struggle of throwing shade on the other side. That's pretty much what good vs evil wars are given how subjective the terms can be. It's not about are you a nice person or are you a bad person but instead are you in league with the demons or do you side with the angels.

Recent games have even expanded the alignment discussion to include Evil characters in a party. They're not orphanage-burning psychopaths anymore but people with real complexity and depth to them who simply see the world from a selfish viewpoint. Like you might even know some Evil people in real life that you'd even consider your friends, whether because they're good at hiding their intent or they have decided you fit into their desires for companionship and wish to retain your services.

One man's devil is another man's saint sort of thing.

It's why I've always been more taken in by the struggle of Order vs Destruction, or Lawful vs Chaos. Now there's a REAL cosmic force, not situated in subjective morality but of creation and oblivion, of structure and anarchy, of negentropy vs entropy. With so many cosmologies beginning with "in the beginning there was nothing" everything that exists is an aberration of the original non-existence. It's like Light vs Dark, dark being the natural state of the universe until along comes this blinding light from something out of nowhere and with it all these creatures and this thing called heat. Or it's like how Death could be seen as the natural state of the universe, a frozen timeless sea of stillness, then along comes Life and tries to shake things up by multiplying and growing and changing things.

For my own personal campaign I've even incorporated good and evil into the other axis since I wanted a single axis team. Best part about it is that either side can be the good side, depending on your world building. Order can represent creation and all its good things and the very state of existing while Chaos wants to return a sea of chaotic magical energies with no form or purpose. Order can favor the planar cosmology while Chaos can be some extra-dimensional horrors like Cthulhu and friends (since even angels/devils both value Order/Law). None of that petty squabbling over who's right and who's wrong and how self-interested does one have to be to be considered evil. Just a straight objective bad guy. But Order can also be team evil, focused on an unchanged uniformity of all things in the tranquility of absolute nothingness, focused so intently on the only having the purist versions of things by removing imperfections because there is no room for Chaos (and ultimately, all things are flawed in some way). Meanwhile Chaos celebrates life and growth and change and freedom and evolution and encourages people to live and expand and build and yes even wage war and murder and do whatever free will dictates.

But the whole Good vs Evil thing? It was flawed from the start and only works in a system where there is an OBJECTIVE Evil guy (Satan, Sauron, The Black King) to oppose the objective Good (God, the Free People, all of life itself).